


sleep in heavenly peace

by prettyluke (buttonjimin)



Series: world war [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Christmas Truce of 1914, Light Angst, M/M, Past Character Death, Trench Warfare, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5411474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttonjimin/pseuds/prettyluke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after months of seeing bodies ripped apart by bullets and bombs, Ashton still isn't prepared to be ripped apart by the fragile German soldier who has seen far more than any child should.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sleep in heavenly peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barelyirwin (Igrievewiththee)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=barelyirwin+%28Igrievewiththee%29).



> for my baby naomi. merry christmas <3  
> thanks to @kittenmichael who helped me construct realistic dialogue for luke. apologies for any historical inaccuracies.

Ashton almost doesn’t believe his ears when he hears it.

The sound of singing arches over No Man’s Land and breaks up the relentless noise of artillery. He only notices because his ears have grown so accustomed to the popping and snapping of distant gunfire, to the point where it feels like static in his ears and the rest of his hearing has dulled. He stops where he’s walking in the sloppy trenches, glancing uneasily at some of the other soldiers. He thinks he must be hallucinating. His feet start to sink into the mud like they do whenever he’s sedentary in these parts for too long, and he moves quickly again, the mud reluctantly relinquishing his boots.

He strains his ears to hear the music better. It’s a familiar tune, but unfamiliar words; _Silent Night_ , but in German. The voices are hesitant, quiet, but steady. The sound is almost comforting, after months in the dank trenches with little in the way of cheer or companionship. War is grim and tedious, and the sound of Christmas carols, even in an unfamiliar language, is a breath of fresh air.

When they got here, when they got shipped off, they were all assured that they would be home by Christmas.

_Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles schläft, einsam wacht. Nur das traute hochheilige Paar, holder Knab’ im lockigen Haar._

“I’m dreaming,” Ashton says out loud, catching the attention of the other members of his brigade nearby. “They’re singing Silent Night.”

“I hear it too,” one of the soldiers says wonderingly. Everyone is paused, mesmerized by the soft sound of men singing not far away. Distant, and gentle, but there all the same. “Look, lights.”

The soldier is right. The German trenches are lighting up. Ashton can see both ways, soldiers shaking each other’s shoulders, waking up the officers to witness this phenomenon. _The Germans_ , he hears them say. _They’re_ singing.

It doesn’t seem right, Ashton thinks. The Germans are heartless, barbaric, and cold. They’re the enemy. How many posters did he see back home with the Germans painted as vicious, bloodthirsty beasts? Reaching for the earth with clawed hands, an evil look on their face. He told Lauren when he left that he had to go fight the Germans because it was the right thing to do. But they’re singing about peace all the same.

_Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh, schlaf in himmlischer Ruh._

Clapping erupts along the British line when the Germans reach a pause, and Ashton reluctantly joins too, figuring that they deserve some applause for it. After all, they did a fair job of it, and he appreciates the festivity. But then, too, he feels his own heart falter. Are the Germans that barbaric after all?

“The first noel,” someone starts singing back in English, and Ashton’s head whips around, searching for the source of the noise. “The angels did say was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay.”

Tentative voices begin to join the unknown soldier. Ashton’s own throat aches to chime in, but others are doing it for him, unexpected and more confident than the German soldiers. He feels a lurch of homesickness in his stomach, because this was Lauren’s favorite Christmas song, and he used to sit around the tree with her and Harry singing carols at the top of their lungs until their mother chided them.

And Lauren would want him to sing to the Germans.

“In fields where they lay keeping their sheep,” he starts softly, his voice lost in a chorus. “On a cold winter’s night that was so deep. Noel, noel, noel, noel. Born is the king of Israel.”

There’s a pause, and someone starts the next verse. Ashton feels his own voice, rough from stretches of yelling and equally frequent stretches of silence, straining to hit the higher notes. It vibrates in his chest, jerking up a lump in his throat.

The gunfire is becoming more intermittent. Ashton suspects the soldiers are listening, distracted and enraptured. The sound of the men singing is mournful and sweet, uncharacteristically serene for the context. They sing at the top of their lungs, desperately trying to project it to the other trenches. It’s pointless, and useless; they’re wasting their breath in a war zone. But Ashton is sick of all the violence. Christmas is Christmas, he supposed. At home or away. With your family or the enemy.

When the singing dies down and nobody can remember any more verses, the gunfire doesn’t pick back up again. It’s died down entirely over the duration of the song. An echo of the artillery noise that never ceases, the German lines applaud for them.

The Germans start on _O Tannenbaum_ , and when they’re done, the British lines sing a carol back, and on and on. Ashton’s heart races. _The damndest thing_ , he thinks. Singing to each other in the middle of the war.

When they start singing _O Come All Ye Faithful_ , the Germans chime in unexpectedly with _Adeste Fideles_. And then they’re not singing to each other, they’re singing with each other. It’s impossible to not feel it in his heart. They’re all sick of these damp trenches, eating and sleeping and breathing mud. They’re not fighting the Germans, they’re fighting themselves. They’re fighting other men. They’re all scared and lonely and miserable and it’s Christmas Eve.

A few heads poke up above the trenches.

Germans, Ashton realizes from the helmets. The German soldiers are peeking up. So the English soldiers do, too. The Germans are conspicuous, with their spiked helmets and the gold insignia emblazoned across the leather. But despite the dirt on their faces and the tired look in their eyes, they are simply boys—men, some of them, probably—and they have the same hopeful look etched into their faces that Ashton can feel in his.

It seems like nobody breathes. At any second, the Germans could be shot. If the British lines raise their heads above the trenches too, the Germans could launch fire. It’s a tense and uncertain moment.

A German soldier scrambles onto No Man’s Land, and Ashton’s own breath stops cold. He’s seen it before, the way the bullets rip through a man, sprays of blood in the air as he flinches back and falls. He’s preparing for a volley of bullets, badly aimed, but numerous enough to find their target.

None come.

The soldier raises his hands in what looks like surrender. He’s unarmed, a huge leap of faith. Shakily, he shouts, “Nicht schießen! Do not shoot!” He keeps his hands outstretched, looking frantically around at the trenches that break up the earth. “We call truce! For this night.”

The soldier remains in place, lifting his spiked helmet off and holding it in his hands. It’s another show of faith, a risk to take. His hair is light, though not quite blond; it’s ruffled from being in the helmet for so long. “Truce,” he repeats. “No fighting on Christmas.”

Ashton doesn’t know what to expect, but it takes less than a minute for some British soldiers to crawl out of the trenches. They’re all in danger, and the German soldier looks nervous as they approach. But they take their helmets off too and offer their hands to shake. Ashton watches in apprehension as soldiers begin to emerge from the trenches and shake hand, a quiet agreement not to shoot, not to fight. It’s hardly an easy sight to bear, men of both armies agreeing on peace in the midst of the bodies strewn everywhere across the bullet raked earth, but it’s impossible to tear his eyes away.

He doesn’t come out of the trench until he sees an officer do so, meeting a German officer halfway to shake hands. When he does, it’s thrilling and awful; he can see the remnants of the bloodbath around him, a graveyard of men who were alive just a day ago. He still feels vulnerable; at any moment, someone could betray the peace and take out a gun. He’s never walked on No Man’s Land without his heart in his throat.

It’s strange seeing the Germans up close. They don’t look all that different from the men in his own brigade; different uniforms, perhaps, but same grimy skin and tired faces. Ashton comes face to face with one, who offers a hand and a tentative smile. He shakes his hand.

The officers are making broken conversation, bits and pieces in English that Ashton can understand. He can hear what he thinks is arrangements for the bodies and burials, but he can’t be sure. He doesn’t know until the British officers begin directing their soldiers, Ashton included, to pull the bodies together and start digging a hole to bury them in.

It’s gruesome, undeniably so, but it’s better than leaving them all to rot in indignity. Some of the soldiers who weren’t retrieved were fragmented by artillery, and they find bones and pieces of bodies strewn here and there. Ashton doesn’t know when they all stopped puking at the gore. They pick through the intact bodies to find ID tags or something to ID the poor soldiers. The German soldiers help to drag their own soldiers aside and dig the hole. Ashton realizes that they’re meant to bury them together—that in death, it matters not what uniform you wear. When he pulls the body of a German soldier near the growing pit, a German soldier catches his eye and smiles gently. Ashton smiles tentatively back. It’s out of context, but oddly reassuring.

The fear of being killed is beginning to diminish, although he still flinches every time a German moves too fast. Not a single shot has been fired. When the bodies have been lowered into the pit and everyone stands back, wiping their brows, they begin to refill the dirt.

One of the German officers stands on a mound of dirt and begins talking solemnly, his voice carrying over the low buzz. Ashton stands with the other soldiers, everyone mixed in with each other. A small German soldier stands next to him, shooting him nervous glances. He must worry about Ashton being armed. Foolishly, he left his rifle in the trenches.

Ashton realizes from the way the German soldiers all bow their heads that they’re mourning the lost soldiers. Nobody makes any move to segregate the troops; the service is for all of them.

“What is he saying?” Ashton whispers to the little soldier next to him. The boy glances up with blue eyes clearer than glass.

“He is saying,” the boy says in a thick German accent, drawing his eyebrows together, “The soldiers, we honor. They are—were all men, the same. Everyone dead, and—fighted brave.” He pauses, looking troubled. “I do not speak good to translate.”

“I’m Ashton,” Ashton says, holding a hand out. “I don’t speak any German, I’m sorry.”

“It is okay,” the boy says, accepting his hand hesitantly. “I am Luke. I speak little English.” He gestures with his fingers, holding them close together. “You are—British?”

“Yeah,” Ashton murmurs.

“I come out Ludwigshafen,” Luke says, nodding solemnly. “I come at start of war. Kaiser says, everyone must go. So I come. I come with brothers, too.”

“Oh,” Ashton says. The German officer has stopped talking, and the soldiers disperse. Some of them are talking uneasily, in broken English or German depending on who can speak what. The light is low, and Ashton strains to make Luke out. When they draw closer to the lanterns people have set out, he can see better. “I’m from Manchester. I came at the beginning, too. I have a brother, but he’s younger than me, and I wouldn’t let him go, even if he was old enough.”

Luke swings his helmet in one hand while he walks, but gesticulates widely with his other to make up for his stunted language skills. He talks slowly, and takes a deep pause after everything Ashton says so he can translate and respond accordingly. “My brothers are older,” he says, gesturing up above his head with a fragile looking hand. His skin, paler than Ashton’s, even, is streaked with grease and gunpowder residue. “They are— _zwanzig_ , and _einundzwanzig_.” Luke tries to show Ashton on his hand, thrusting both hands out twice—twenty?—and then a one. “Twenty, and one-twenty.” He says his Ws like Vs, and his fingers twitch whenever he manages to still them.

“My brother is only twelve,” Ashton says. “And my sister, she’s fourteen. She loves all the pretty dresses the ladies wear. I promised her I would bring home one for Christmas—I told her we would have enough money from my service to buy all the dresses and jewelry she wanted. I told my brother he could have all the model airplanes he wanted, and my mum that—that I would help pay to keep the house, and I would take her for a nice dinner.” Ashton feels his hands tightening at his sides. “The prime minister made us all think that it was just, just—not as big of a deal as it is.” Luke watches him intently, nodding. He moves his small hands close to the lantern, warming them. Ashton thinks idly that Luke looks absolutely nothing like the brutish caricatures he’s seen on the war posters. He looks more like an angel than anything else, but none of them are angels anymore, not at this point.

“My brothers come to the war with me,” Luke repeats. “Ben, he is oldest. Jack, he is younger. But I am youngest.” His eyes focus somewhere distant, as if they see the makeshift ball being kicked to and fro between a pair of German soldiers and a British soldier, but Ashton never catches his eyes settling. They’re somewhere else entirely, seeing something Ashton doesn’t.

“Are they with your troop too?”

“No,” Luke says, looking down at the lantern. The light flickers over his irises. “Ben is big army general now. He sended a letter to me, for two months back. The big boots say he is a good general. They promise to pay Mutti and Papi lots.”

“And your other brother?”

“He—I cannot say about him,” Luke says, jaw tensing. “We do not talk about him.”

Ashton backs off quickly, not wanting to push Luke. “Your parents,” Ashton picks up quickly. “Do you miss them?”

“Yes, very much,” Luke says with a sigh. He unconsciously moves closer to Ashton. “Mutti sended me with many brötchen. We are not very rich. We are just happy. We are just family. You understand, no?”

Ashton smiles. “Yeah, I understand.”

“Papi says he will be very proud of me when I come home,” Luke says, smiling shakily. He lights up, the memory clearly fond. “He says I am very brave. I please him.”

Ashton can’t explain the strange hollowness about Luke; he wouldn’t have noticed, except for the proximity. He must look something the same. He’s seen so much horror, so much depravity. Bodies torn apart, men jerking back from the force of bullets, limbs scattered too far from a torso to know who it belongs to. Once you’ve seen a man die, you are never the same, and he’s seen so much worse. Ashton thinks of his own mother back home. What will she see when he comes back home? Will his eyes be dead from the ringing of screams in his ears?

“My mum is alone,” Ashton tells Luke. Luke watches him intently, nodding. “She raised me and my siblings all on her own. I didn’t want to leave her. But I knew I could get her some money. And she has less mouths to feed, now.”

“You are family man,” Luke remarks.

“It was my job to be a father to my siblings,” Ashton says, his throat tightening. He remembers the day the war was declared, coming home from his job to find Lauren and Harry in a panic. The day he left, Lauren had pressed a handmade paper flower into his hand and asked him to come home safe. It had disappeared into the ever consuming trenches. Since then, Ashton had kept his important things in the buttoned pockets of his uniform and his knapsack by his side. Now, he pulls out a slightly soggy photograph. It’s black and white, damaged at the corners by water that soaked through his pants when it last rained. But the glossy face has endured somehow. In the photo, he sits with one arm around his mother and one around Lauren, who sits below. His mother’s arm rests around Harry’s shoulder, next to Lauren. They all look younger, less war-worn.

“You look so young,” Luke murmurs, peering closer.

“I was eighteen. That was a year ago.”

“I am _siebzehn_ now. Seventeen, no?” Luke gestures with seven fingers, and Ashton responds with a nod. “We have to go home safe,” Luke says solemnly, clutching Ashton’s hand. “For families.”

Ashton smiles despite himself, laughing unexpectedly. “We’ll make it,” he says softly.

The night seems surreal. The lights guide their feet when they stand to kick around an old ration can as a makeshift football. It’s just the two of them, and when Luke doesn’t open his mouth, he can almost believe he’s just another comrade. He gives little thought to what they’ll do the next day, the next week. Tonight feels suspended, as if it is taking place in an alternate universe. War seems far away, a distant concept. It’s jarring to understand that the Germans are, for the most part, just boys—scared, wet, and achingly young. Luke is only seventeen, and small at that, but he’s not the youngest. And he’s a crack shot. Ashton doesn’t want to know what he had to do to prove that in the past, what he had to do to achieve the deadly accuracy his troop claims. It sends a shiver down his spine. No, tonight Luke is just a boy. Not a killer. He is just seventeen, a child, and he’s schooling Ashton in football.

Luke dribbles the can expertly, light footed as he tries to make minimal noise when his boots contact the metal. He feints left, right, dribbles in a circle, before kicking it to Ashton. It hits his own boot with a hollow metal _thunk_. He kicks it back at Luke, who stops it easily. “You’re good at this,” Ashton points out. “You played back in Germany?”

Luke stops dribbling to register Ashton’s words and come up with a reply, then nods curtly and kicks it back. “Yes. Jack and I played all the time in our front yard. He is captain of football team, and then I am. We played so much neighbor woman says we are raise badly. She comes to Mutti and tells her we are— _Hurensöhne_. Jack hears and gets very angry, but Mutti tells him not to do anything. He is mad neighbor woman calls Mutti a—whore, a _hure_. Then she whack me with her cane on sidewalk for kicking ball into yard. I come home with—red bumps on my legs. Jack goes to her yard in winter and pisses _küss meinen Arsch_ in the snow.” Luke laughs, dribbling the can again. “He does lot of stupid things for honor.”

Ashton laughs, too. He tries to imagine another version of Luke—bigger, taller, broader. Older, with facial hair and mischievous eyes. Luke tells him of Jack picking up girls, playing pranks on the teachers at school, teaching Luke how to make paper airplanes. Luke’s face grows fond as he relates the stories of their childhood to Ashton; his body relaxes, and his eyes warm. Ashton finds it difficult to focus on both the ball and Luke.

“You must miss him a lot,” Ashton says absently. The can hurtles back to Luke’s feet and is stopped with deadly precision. He waits for it to come back, but this time Luke just rolls it back and forth under his foot and bites his lip.

“I do,” he says softly. He brings his foot down and crushes the can, almost maliciously. “Always.”

“What happened?” Ashton feels it’s the wrong question to ask, but he asks it anyway.

“I tell you what happened,” Luke says, booting the can away. His face contorts, like he’s trying not to cry. “It is not a nice story.”

Ashton waits for him to continue. The sounds of other men talking and messing around set a low buzz, but only Luke’s voice comes through.

“We get sended to war together,” Luke says softly, sadly. His voice is choked, and his blue eyes fill and gloss over. “He is always so much braver than me, he tells me not to come with him. He says to me I am too young, and will break Mutti’s heart if I die. But I only want to follow him. I want to follow him and Ben like I do as boy, when I follow them to school and in _verstecken_. He lets me follow him to the war and to the big cracks in the dirt. But after few months it is Jack who cannot stand the war. It is him who shakes and cries when he hears the noise, so loud. Always bombs and guns. He hates it, he says. And then he asks to leave, and they say no. Kaiser Wilhelm needs soldiers, not weak men. And then he tries to leave when we are at rest rotation. They catch him, of course, and put him against a mattress. Then they shoot him, and I watch. Because he is a traitor, and wants to leave.”

Ashton is caught in his horror, as if punched. It’s not so strange; they shoot their own soldiers on the British side, too. But he’s never seen it done, and he wouldn’t be able to live after seeing his own brother get executed by firing squad. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. If my brother died, I would kill myself. How do you go on?”

“I cannot allow Ben to go home alone,” Luke says, trying to mop up the tears on his cheeks. “I cried a bit, but they say he is a traitor. I will go home someday. I am not fighting British, I am fighting humans. I have no choice, but I hope God closes his eyes and forgives me.”

Ashton doesn’t know what to do but lunge forward and throw his arms around Luke’s shoulders. Luke gasps in surprise, maybe even fright from the sudden motion, but relaxes and puts his arms around Ashton’s waist. “Nobody will blame you,” he whispers. “Nobody will blame any of us. God knows we have to save ourselves.”

Luke nods and pulls back, wiping his eyes. “Thank you. You are kind.” He smiles tremulously. “We will recover, yes?”

Ashton agrees quietly. They forget about playing with cans between their feet, instead lying on the ground where it’s flat and high and dry, and looking up at the moon. They’ve been spared the wetness that usually persists, even though it’s still cold. Ashton feels safer lying down; they’re at lower risk for being picked off by any gunmen who should betray the truce.

The moon has been there for both of them every night, only one constant when the landscape is always being leveled and your friends are always dropping dead. Because Ashton likes looking up at the moon and knowing it’ll still come up the next night, even if everyone around him is dead, that back home his family can see the same moon, cycling around.

Their hands pillow their heads to protect them from the hard dirt and anything unsanitary on the ground. They continue to talk through the night. About Christmas, about themselves, but more than anything, about just wanting to go home and forget what they’ve seen and done. Every single soldier is haunted by the memories of hundreds of soldiers falling dead, some in one piece, some not; At some point, their inner hands come down to grasp each other’s.

“I want to be an artist when I get out of here,” Ashton whispers. “I used to draw all the time. I haven’t drawn in so long. Even if I have to work other jobs, to support my family, I’m gonna make it work.”

“After this,” Luke says, rolling over and brushing his knuckles against Ashton’s cheek, “you deserve everything you want.”

Ashton turns his face toward Luke, cushioning it with his hand. Luke’s eyes are bright, reflecting the moonlight beautifully. “What do you want?” Ashton asks. “When the war is done, what do you want to be?”

Luke smiles briefly, falteringly. His eyes reflect the pain of the war and the things he’s seen, maybe worse than what Ashton’s seen. The sight of his own brother’s body, pinned to a mattress in blood and bullets, slumping limp to the floor when the light went out. A childhood shattered, a role model marred in Luke’s memory. Rain, driving away the blood and drowning the noise of the bullets that haunted his brother, and absent tonight.

Luke looks at Ashton tremulously. “When I go home, I want to be happy.”

 

* * *

 

Ashton tries to forget about Luke in the days and weeks after. His heart resigns itself in a cold, melancholy sigh to the resumption of the war; the Germans were only his friend for a night, and the war goes on. He is overwhelmed once more by the horror of what is happening; the dank, musty smell of the wet trenches when it rains again and the everlasting pounding of bullets, the sound raging against the inside of his skull. He forgets in the moment, sometimes, that he had met Luke at all. Sometimes when he thinks about it, that night seems too far away—too golden to be real. But the button from Luke’s uniform, given to him before they parted, and Luke’s home address, _for after the war_ like Luke said, is still safely in his left breast pocket.

But he does see Luke again; just once, when he sees that the boy aiming a gun at his head has eyes as blue as how his lips turn in the worst of winter, and they meet eyes in a panicked shock.

“Schießen! Schießen!” Officers yell in the distance. _Shoot, shoot._ Ashton raises his gun instinctively, but they stay frozen in place, in danger of being killed by someone else.

Before he can register the motion, Luke shoulders his gun and shoots at Ashton’s leg. Ashton cannot even comprehend it, it happens so fast, and then his leg is in screaming, burning pain. His own voice feels raw as he collapses to the ground, and he finds no strength to open his mouth again, the sound stolen. His hands move to cover the wound, shaky as hot, slick blood pours over his fingers. The world seems to dim and dull around him as he prays that he’ll be saved, that this isn’t his time to die.

He shuts his eyes to deal with the pain, some vague illusion of hands pulling him across the ground shadowing behind his eyelids. When he wakes up, the trenches are miles behind him.

Gone is the mud and the flying bullets. Instead, he’s surrounded by nurses in starched white dresses. They’re a welcome sight to his eyes. There’s a curtain on either side of him, probably sectioning him off from the other wounded. He feels fuzzy and dizzy, like he can’t quite keep his grasp on the here and now. When he shuts his eyes, the battle comes back. Open, it goes away.

“You got lucky,” a nurse says, swimming in and out of focus. She speaks with a strong French accent. Ashton smells antiseptic everywhere. It’s in the air, on the sheets, on his clothes on him. “We managed to save your leg. The bullet went clean through, only a little fragmentation. They could have shot you in the head.”

Luck.

Ashton shuts his eyes again and thinks back to the moment before everything seemed to explode, remembers the look of panic on Luke’s face. They’d both known, when they locked eyes.

 _You got lucky,_ the nurse’s words echo.

But Ashton knows better than that. 

**Author's Note:**

> (there might be a part two if you beg hard enough :) ) merry christmas guys!


End file.
